How to Reduce a Three-Node NSX Cluster to a Single Node
When deploying my new VCF environment, I forgot to adjust the JSON file to specify only NSX Cluster with only one node. As a result, after deployment, I saw that my NSX environment was set up with three nodes instead of one. Since this is a test environment, I wanted to remove the extra nodes and retain just one to conserve resources for other components. I explored the process of removing the nodes and successfully reduced the cluster to a single node. Below, I’ll share the steps I followed to achieve this.
Note: It is not recommended to perform this process in a production environment. If you must, ensure you have a full backup of your NSX configuration before proceeding.
Steps to Remove Extra Nodes
1- Log in to the NSX Manager UI.
2- Navigate to System > Appliances to check the health and status of the three-node cluster
3- Log in to the management domain vCenter Server by using the vSphere Client. Locate the VM of the NSX node that you want to keep in the cluster and click Launch Web Console.
4- Log in using admin credentials and run the following command to get UUID and status of each node in the cluster.
get cluster status
5- Now you have the UUID of nodes that you want to remove, use the following command to detach a node from the cluster.
detach node UUID_of_Node
6- If the the detach process is successful, you should receive the following message.
7- If you check the cluster, will realize that one node has been removed. You can then repeat the same steps for the other node.
8- After removing the second node, you should have only one node in the cluster, just like mine.
9- Now, you can shut down the NSX node VMs that you have detached and easily delete them from vCenter to free up resources.
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